Food bank helps local residents to grow kitchen gardens

Benefits of food grants are short-lived

Food pantries and soup kitchens provide a crucial public service to a growing number of hungry local residents, but a patron fed today will always be hungry tomorrow. To make a long-term improvement in the food security of a community, residents need better access to healthy, inexpensive food.

Solution: Teach food bank patrons to garden

Following from the “Teach a man to fish” adage, the Greater Lansing Food Bank launched an initiative to help its patrons grow kitchen and community gardens. After an initial gift of food, the pantry teaches gardening workshops at a local nursery, provides access to free tools and seeds in a lending library, and even land if needed – through a network of over 90 community gardens they have helped create. This extensive program has helped over 400 community members to start their own kitchen gardens, enabling them to feed an estimated 7,000 people.